We carved through the woods, staying off the main roads until we were well outside town. I had an urge to whistle for my missing dogs, but I didn’t, worried what else might come crashing through the trees to answer my call. If we got anywhere near the other ridgebacks, I figured Cassius would let me know.

We crested a rise. Through a break in the pines, we could see Jack Kaner’s place below, the weathered barn thrusting up from the fields. Long tunnels of tarp covered some of his vegetable crops, insulating them from the cold. To the south, the highway snaked through the landscape, a dark strip splitting the darkness.

Alex gestured toward the barn. “Ever since he got rid of his horses, Mr. Kaner parks his truck in there by the stables. I came once with my dad when someone spray-painted graffiti on the side of the barn.”

“I heard that was Andre Swisher,” Patrick said.

I thought about Andre running around the square like a trapped rat as the women—the Chasers—closed in. How they’d circled the pickup and dragged him out through the shattered window.

“Do you think it’s safe to drive now?” I asked. “The noise and headlights might draw them.”

“It’s fifty miles just to Ponderosa Pass,” Patrick said. “Then up and over to Stark Peak. No way we make that on foot.” He scanned the highway ahead, the wide plain of the valley unfurled like a giant map. “More open space out here. Less chance we get penned in.”

We worked our way down the steep hillside toward the barn, our flashlights stabbing the dark. We stumbled over roots, sent pebbles and dirt cascading. We were as quiet as we could be, but probably not as quiet as we thought we were.

At last we came out onto level ground about a mile from the barn, walls of corn spreading before us. In the plots behind the corn, rows of curved tarp lay over beds of lettuce and other produce that Kaner sold in his market. The “caterpillar tunnels” were built by stretching tarp over arcs of bent PVC piping, so they were segmented like the bugs. Each one was as long as a football field. A corner of tarp had pulled free from its rebar stake, snapping in the wind. The air smelled of rich soil, rot, and greens. A scarecrow jutted up, pitchfork in hand, and in the distance the Kaner house sat dark and quiet.

Cassius hesitated, his growl no longer a puppy growl but a rumble in his chest.

“It’s okay, boy,” I whispered. “Come on.”

As we eased out into the field, more scarecrows came into sight all around us. A whole patch of them. And then we realized.

They weren’t scarecrows.

Entry 19

ENTRY 19